Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/267

244 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. said to have rallied around their native princes, and returned to fix their abode in their former seat soon after the catastrophe ? ^ Lastly, in the bed of potsherds which rests on the ruins caused by the conflagration was exhumed an erection of some im- portance, built of cut stones, and altogether exhibiting a finer style of architecture than its fellows. It is not unlikely that we have here the old temple of Ilian Athene mentioned by Strabo, and if so, is that not one more point in favour of the hypothesis which would place on this spot the Homeric Pergamus, the citadel of Troy ? This local and abiding worship, whatever its primitive form, was a powerful factor in fixing and perpetuating in the land current legends connected with it ; they formed the nucleus of the vast poetical cycle of which the Iliad is but an episode. Accordingly, we are willing to believe that when Homer sang of the anger of Peleide and the home return of the heroes, there existed on the mound of Hissarlik a fortified hamlet around which hovered the names of Pergamus, Ilium, and Troy ; but that several stages of superimposed houses already covered the foundations of the buildings of the ancient town, the fame of which still lingered in the memory of the natives. As to the lofty, massive walls which the spade of Schliemann has brought to light, it is probable that they still protruded their tops above the accumulated earth beneath which their base was then already hidden. Though imperfect, they were likely to be taken as stupendous works of art by the simple native folk, and give colouring to exaggerations and fictions invented on the spot, in order to account why a community, whose monuments even in their decay testified to no mean influence on the part of their owners, should have fallen from its high estate. It may well be that the vague memories left by this power, along with its tragic end, were confounded with struggles of a more recent date ; the invasion of iEolian colonists, for example, who, led by Achaean chiefs, met with a stout resistance on landing in the Troad. Then had taken place those deadly encounters on the banks of the Scamander between the Phrygian or Mysian tribe — which till then had been in peaceful possession of the land — and the invaders ; and when obliged to give up the fertile plain to the new-comers, it had entrenched itself behind what still existed of the defences of the dismantled citadel, and had been reduced ^ Iliad, Cf. Strabo.